Technology Marketers Handbook

The Technology Marketers Handbook, 2012 Edition
Everything you could possibly want to know about technology marketing in one place.
Table of Contents
Introduction Key Findings and Predictions Marketers to Watch in 2012 Positioning and Branding Social Media Content Marketing Demand Generation Sales and Marketing Alignment Research and Planning Marketing Technology One Final Thing Contributors 2 3 6 8 13 20 26 32 35 38 43 44
2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook
Introduction
Who should use the handbook
As the title implies, the Handbook was created with technology marketers in mind. Marketers who focus on information technology products and services that businesses use should find it particularly useful. But CEOs, salespeople, and product management types can also learn a lot here. Furthermore, the Technology Marketers Handbook is designed to be informative and fun, so if youre just interested in the topic of technology marketing, have a look and pay particularly close attention to the lists weve curated. Much of the Technology Marketers Handbook was crowdsourced directly from dozens of marketing practitioners and experts. These contributions are highlighted because they contain particularly valuable insights from your peers. If you want to participate in live conversations on almost every topic in this Handbook, click here: www.focus. com/topic/technology-marketing . Youll find some of the worlds leading marketers contributing to events, Q&A, surveys, and research on Focus.com under the tag Technology Marketing. After each contribution, you will see the name of the person who made the contribution. If you click on the contributors name, the link will take you to the page on Focus.com where the conversation originally took place. Youll find additional commentary and opinions there as well. We love lists so youll find a lot of them in the Handbook. Lists are the easiest way to consume information, so if you dont have time to read all the text in here, just read the lists. Speaking of lists, at the end of many of them, you will find links to Focus.com that allow you to add your own items. Just click through the link and answer the question that we originally asked on the topic. Finally, feel free to hack, cite, copy, remix, distribute, and otherwise mess with the Handbook.
How we created the handbook

Creating a document like this one seems like a herculean effort, but not when you have a crowd of some of the worlds best technology marketers helping you. Most of the Handbook was in fact sourced from members of Focus.com. Of course, our team of community managers put it all together by curating the highest quality content from the community.
The owners manual

Here are some basic tips on deriving the most value from the recommendations, strategies, best practices, and tips contained herein.
10 Key Findings and Predictions

Technology marketers will be busier than ever this year. They will continue to focus on todays hot tactics such as social media, content marketing, and demand generation. But there will be new trends as well. Here are ten to watch that all of the hot tactics du jour, such as inbound marketing and demand generation, can benefit immensely from a little strategic marketing, particularly in the area of positioning. The fastest growing technology vendors share one common marketing characteristic - theyve created a strong, memorable position in the mind of their customers.
The return of strategic marketing

Technology marketers have focused the vast majority of their recent efforts on tactics and execution, often at the expense of strategic marketing efforts. In 2012, marketers will realize
Here come the startup marketers

Early stage startups, particularly internet startups, have recently made great strides with their marketing efforts. They are using a potent combination of product/market fit, viral marketing techniques, and a relentless focus on the customer experience. Look for large IT vendor marketing organizations to adopt many of these same principles and tactics.
Customer powered marketing

Buyers want to hear from their peers when it comes to evaluating technology products and services. Marketers will use their existing customers (and prospects for that matter) to help create marketing and sales experiences for prospective customers. This will take the form of legacy collateral such as case studies, but will also take the form of innovative experiences such as real time, peer-powered Q&A.

The events renaissance
According to a recent IDG survey, technology marketers will spend just under 24% of their marketing budgets on events this year. Surprised? You shouldnt be. Events have experienced a renaissance as marketers have learned to drive in-person engagement via smaller events and conferences.
Leads become a commodity

Services like Data.com (formerly Jigsaw) and technology media companies are creating a marketing environment where every IT vendor has instant access to the demographic information of just about every business and IT professional in the world. Marketing organizations should treat the acquisition of raw leads and records as a commodity function and invest strategic resources in creating differentiated campaigns and offers.
Sales and marketing misalignment

Theres no issue that receives more attention in technology marketing than sales and marketing alignment. In spite of all the punditry, time, and money that has been thrown at the alignment problem, most IT vendors have failed to make meaningful progress on this issue. That wont change in 2012. In fact, this year many vendors will punt on alignment and have marketing move slightly back up the funnel.
Return of 1:1 marketing

In the enterprise segment in particular, look for a return of hyper-targeted, one to one, outbound marketing. Technology marketers will reacquaint themselves with the value of creating deep, substantive relationships with decision-makers at big companies. Targeted account list building, appointment setting, highly produced media experiences, and multi-touch campaigns will all play major roles here.
Consumerization of IT marketing
Youve heard of the consumerization of IT where IT products are becoming easier to purchase and use. The consumerization trend will also impact traditional forms of IT marketing this year as marketers emphasize ease, fun, and simplicity across all of their campaigns. Look for startups to lead the charge here.
Shelfware everywhere
Marketing organizations have been spending record amounts on technology the last couple of years. Whats not clear is how much this technology is actually being used and whether marketers are seeing real ROI. Given the fact that most marketing organizations are long on budget and short on people, it should come as no surprise that there are a lot of shelfware rumors floating around out there.

A social backlash
Although 95% of technology marketers currently engage in social marketing, expect a backlash in 2012. Social isnt going away and it will still be a hot topic, but many technology marketers will reduce the amount of time and dollars they are spending on social media and marketing activities. Look for IT marketers to move away from the big social networks like Facebook and Twitter and towards smaller communities of known prospects and customers.
Other trends to watch

Other trends to watch: the decline of infographics; the American economy recovers, but the Eurozone and China struggle; whatever happened to Klout; Eloqua gets aggressive; Adobe as a marketing technology vendor; innovative case study formats; the rise of experience designers; exclusive peer groups; SFDC continues acquisitions; the cloud meme continues, attention scarcity dominates, B2B storytelling
Click here to add your favorites to the list: What are your predictions for technology marketing in 2012?
10 Marketers to Watch in 2012

Yes, you can read the rest of this handbook, but if you really want to be a world-class technology marketer this year, just watch what these 10 marketers do.
Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

Rand is known as a legitimate SEO guru and hes worth watching just for that, but hes also turned SEOmoz into an inbound marketing giant with amazing content and thought leadership. www.seomoz.org/team/randfish
Andy Berndt, Google

Google creates remarkable products. Andy, along with the rest of the team at Googles Creative Labs, makes sure that people understand how magical these products can be. plus.google.com/110839867176526013157/posts
Jon Iwata, IBM

How does IBMs Sam Palmisano show up in all the right media outlets at all the right times? Meet Jon Iwata, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications at IBM. www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/biography/10063.wss
Joe Chernov, Eloqua

Joe is the reigning champion of content marketing. He and his team produce an enviable amount of high quality media in a market that doesnt exactly lend itself to hot topics. www.jchernov.com
Sean Ellis startup marketing guru

From freemium models to co-developing products with customers, Sean is both a thought leader and practitioner when it comes to innovative marketing tactics. www.startup-marketing.com
10 Marketers to Watch in 2012

Sara Larsen, SAP
SAPs demand generation platform is the best in the technology marketing industry. Sara is a detail-oriented, metrics fanatic who makes sure that SAPs pipeline continues to grow. www.linkedin.com/in/saralarsen
Mike Volpe, Hubspot

Hubspot eats its own dog food under the marketing leadership of Mike Volpe who has built the worlds greatest inbound marketing machine. www.hubspot.com/company/management/mike-volpe
Jon Miller, Marketo

Jon is at the forefront of new thinking on how to measure the effectiveness of B2B marketing efforts. His latest presentation on metrics is must see TV. www.marketo.com/about/management.php#jMiller
Feel free to add your favorites to the list: Which technology marketers are worth watching in 2012?
Alexis Ohanian, the internets Leonardo DaVinci

Alexis will undoubtedly bristle when he discovers weve called him a marketer, but hes truly great at it see his recent efforts for Hipmunk as one example. alexisohanian.com
Mary Ann Reilly, American Express

Mary Ann is the driving force behind American Express OpenForum. Imagine building a social media business inside of a financial services company no small task, but Mary Ann did it. www.openforum.com/connectodex/open-forumhosts?username=mary-ann-fitzmaurice-reilly
Positioning and Branding

Now, More Important than Ever
Positioning and branding continue to present some interesting challenges for technology marketers. If positioning is the lasting image that a company creates in the mind of a customer, and the brand is essentially a promise made between a company or product and a customer, then establishing a position and keeping that brand promise are inherently more difficult in technology markets. Thats because the IT market is fundamentally more complex than most other markets. Technology products themselves can be difficult to understand, evaluation cycles are longer, buyers are well informed and hyper-critical, and the value or benefit of a product is often far removed from the point of purchase. Having said that, for technology companies, positioning and branding are more important than ever. Why? First, technology and business professionals are busier than ever. As a result, making a company or product stand out in the mind of the customer is critical. Second, todays hot marketing tactics whether they are social media, content marketing, demand generation, or lead nurturing all benefit from a strong position and brand.
Positioning and Branding Best Practices

With that as background, there are some best practices that technology marketers can use to make their positioning and branding efforts more effective
Effective positioning is simple positioning

An effective position cuts through the noise in a market and creates a memorable image in the mind of the customer.

Positioning overcomes a critical marketing challenge - most consumers dont have space in their heads to create and maintain bonds with more than 8 products. Its an especially critical challenge in the IT industry given how crowded and complex the space is. Technology marketers should make sure they can articulate a position that does in fact create a lasting image in the mind of the customer. Its not as easy as it sounds, but there are two tricks that can help. First, try to create a position that differentiates your product or service from the competition. Salesforce.coms original positioning vis-a-vis Siebel is very instructive here. Second, make your position as simple as possible. Try to think like a consumer marketer here. Or better yet, try to think like Apple or Google. Its about letting your customers tell you what you do that delivers satisfaction and then amplifying that. Its all about satisfaction, as perceived by the customer and measured by the vendor. Matthew Trifiro in the form of the consumerization of IT. An emphasis on SaaS delivery models, user experience design, and the overall customer experience will make it easier than ever for technology companies to do what they say they can do. In a day and age where IT buyers are mandating increased transparency and accountability from the vendors that market and sell to them, keeping the brand promise is more important ever. Be very careful with promises, as they tend to be like babies - easy to make, tough to deliver. Randy Brunson
Instill the brand in the entire customer experience

Many technology companies view branding as an exercise that belongs exclusively to marketing when, in fact, the brand must be represented in everything that a customer experiences. Lets say one of the elements of a technology vendors brand is easy. It goes without saying that marketing should incorporate easy into its messaging and campaigns. But its actually more important that easy become a fundamental tenet of the product itself (e.g. is it easy to use?), customer support (e.g. is it easy to resolve issues?), and sales (e.g. is the product easy to buy?). Instilling the easy attribute into everything the customer experiences is much more important than creating an advertisement that simply makes that claim. The keys to building a brand hasnt really changed much in the last 100 years - build a great product and provide a great customer experience - and a great brand will follow.
The brand promise easy to make, tough to deliver

Many information technology companies are unable to live up to the aforementioned brand promise. Consumer technology companies have made a lot of progress here in recent years, but IT companies targeting B2B markets continue to struggle given the historical complexity of information technology. There is, however, hope for all technology marketers when it comes to keeping the brand promise, and that hope comes

What has changed in the last decade is how much power consumers have to help build up or tear down a brand. Marketings job is now more about creating great content that enhances the customer experience; and enabling customers to build your brand for you through word of mouth. Loren McDonald When buyers had less knowledge, marketing and sales were the face of the brand. Now buyers can look behind the facade. Indeed their favorite way of finding out about products is now talking to others, not talking to the vendor at all. So those others are now an important part of communicating your brand. That means that marketing is no longer a department - everyone who works for the company, every customer and user (current and past) and any influencer in the product area is a potential benefit or problem for the brand. That is causing a problem for antisocial companies, which want to talk at customers but not to hear from them unless it is to purchase. Marketing has new media - the people your potential customer will ask for advice. And they arent fooled by advertising, email or POS. Theyll recommend what works for them. Peter Johnston
Unleash your army of brand ambassadors

Social media has the power to transform how technology companies articulate the brand. Companies no longer have to depend solely on the marketing department to brand the business. Instead, employees, customers, and partners can act as brand ambassadors. Technology vendors not only have a bigger voice as a result of this, they also have a more authentic one. 81% of technology buyers cite their peers as the most valuable information source they have. Technology marketers should take advantage of this by creating brand ambassador programs for the entire market ecosystem that surrounds the company.
Let the brand create demand

Most CMOs in the information technology market struggle to articulate the ROI of their branding efforts. Linking brand investments to revenue in markets with long, attenuated sales cycles is undoubtedly difficult, but there are ways to connect the dots between branding and revenue. Take the trend of inbound marketing. While much is made of driving search engine referrals and other forms of organic traffic via inbound marketing campaigns, the true leverage here lies in creating a powerful brand. Many of the worlds leading IT vendors generated tens of thousands of inbound leads every month not because they created a lot of content, but because they created a powerful brand.
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6 Remarkable Technology Marketing Campaigns

American Express Small Business Saturday
American Express, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, and Digitas created a movement to support one of the backbones of the American economy, small businesses. The campaign generated an exceptional amount of earned media, generating 2.7 million Facebook fans along the way. www.smallbusinesssaturday.com
Google Chrome Fastball

Over the last couple of years, Google has created a number of inspiring campaigns. For a company that hates ads, thats no small feat. One of the best is the Chrome Fastball campaign that ties a simple, but engaging user experience into the core message and value proposition of the campaign. www.youtube.com/chromefastball
IBM Watson Jeopardy

Entering Watson as a contestant on Jeopardy was a stroke of marketing genius. 10 million viewers tuned in to watch Watson take Ken Jennings out to the cerebral woodshed. Add in a flurry of social media coverage and a special program on Nova and IBM had turned an obscure piece of artificial intelligence into a pop culture phenomenon. www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson
Apple Facetime
With every new product, Apple has launched simple yet brilliant campaigns. Apple has stuck to a very similar theme for their new product launches, from the iPod to the iPad2, but went another route with their FaceTime Campaign. Playing off the emotions of seeing a grandchild for the first time, or talking to a loved one overseas, Apple shows the impact of the visual telephone. youtu.be/yatSAEqNL7k
Xerox Real Business

With the help of digital agency VML, Xerox created a site where Xeroxs real customers take over an office building. The experience takes case studies to a new, interactive level by highlighting how these customers use Xerox to support a variety of back office functions. http://www.realbusiness.com Click here to add your own campaigns: What were your favorite technology marketing campaigns in 2011?
Dropbox Free Space

The geniuses at Dropbox nailed how to use incentives to drive referral and word of mouth marketing. Word cant describe the simple elegance of asking users to take simple referral actions to earn free space on Dropbox. www.dropbox.com/free
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5 Agencies Built for Technology Marketing

Babcock & Jenkins
Want an agency that embraces B2B? Babcock & Jenkins proudly does. They understand how business and technology professionals make decisions and arent afraid of the D word demand. www.bnj.com
Johannes Leonardo
This smallish, New York City agency is now famous for the Google Demo Slam, a community driven campaign that has generated over 1 billion page views. www.johannesleonardo.com
Cuban Council
Known as the creative brains behind the Facebook logo, Cuban Council has an unrivaled roster of hot startup clients. See the Zendesk site for an example of what truly creative minds can do for a technology company. www.cubancouncil.com
Traction
Traction counts the likes of Salesforce, SAP, AliBaba, and Intuit among its clients. For Intuit, Traction built a creative application that helped small businesses tap into networks of advisors. www.tractionco.com
Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

GSP is best known for its Milk campaigns, but this storied consumer firm also does remarkable work for some of the worlds leading information technology companies. www.goodbysilverstein.com
You can add your favorite technology marketing agencies to this list: Who are the top agencies for technology marketers?
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Social Media
A Battle for Fans, Friends, and Followers or Customers?
Conventional wisdom says that social media is much better suited for consumer marketers than B2B marketers. In reality though, 86% of B2B companies are using social media compared to 82% of consumer-focused companies. Having said that, B2B marketers utilize social media much less frequently than their B2C counterparts. Only 32% of B2B firms engage in social media on a daily basis, compared to 52% of B2C companies. While social activity may be lighter in business markets, the stakes and potential ROI can still be compelling thanks to higher average deal sizes. One great example is that of Avaya making a $250,000 sale by monitoring and responding to an inquiry on Twitter. Another is EMCs Breaking Records campaign, which won B2B Magazines award for best integrated tech campaign. B2B Magazine noted that the campaign got more than 700,000 views on YouTube, more than 40 posts by influential bloggers, 2,500 participants in the community event and more than 1,500 tweets... The total Facebook fan base more than doubled in two weeks. An impressive 28% of all traffic to the event registration page originated from social media sites and/or social media engagement. Carmen Hill Its also possible to integrate social media activities into traditional technology marketing tactics such as offline events: I am on a 14-city speaking tour with Marketos Revenue Rockstar Roadshow. I collect cards at the event through meetings and a give away and I invite all these people to [connect on LinkedIn] with me before my head hits the pillow that night. I have about an 85% connect rate. These folks also get a follow up email from me the next day so I can see how they react in Marketo... So far, I have created 3 net new [opportunities] in the last 60 days with this approachIt also seems to create a trusted environment. I just got some great answers to research Im doing on CMOs and metrics. I also closed 2 significant deals earlier this year through LinkedIn relationships. Debbie Qaqish
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Social Media
While most technology marketers grasp the basics of social media, here are some trends, tips and techniques to make note of. less customization than Facebook, but its an ideal way to disseminate news and short snippets to your followers and to learn more through your brands mentions and overall sentiment. Paid options such as Promoted Tweets, Trends, and Accounts are an effective way to draw in new followers and even target your competition. Another way to take advantage of Twitter is through its chats. Often, there are weekly conversations around a specific topic with a dedicated hashtag - #cloudchat and #biwisdomchat are two examples of technology-related chats where marketers can participate.
The Social Media Landscape

Social media is dominated by three major networks: Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. While most technology marketers now understand the ins and outs of the major platforms, there are some tips and tricks that arent always in plain view. Each platform has its own benefits and quirks that technology marketers can take advantage of.
LinkedIn
Every technology marketer is aware of LinkedIn as professional networking tool. But LinkedIn is also a powerful way for marketing organizations to engage in tactical prospecting and lead generation. There are a number of hacks that seasoned LinkedIn users employ to target specific prospects. One example is looking for end users in the networks of competitors salespeople. Its a great way to determine whom the competition is currently selling to. Talk about qualified lead generation!
Facebook
The worlds most popular social network is a consumer marketers dream. So whats in it for an information technology vendor? It can be an effective engagement vehicle for companies targeting the small business community (see American Express as a company thats done an exceptional job of this). One of the hidden benefits for technology marketers lies in Facebook Advertising. The demographic targeting options are incredibly effective and Facebook Insights offers great visual analytics for both ads and pages.
The Best of the Rest

Though the big three dominate, dont underestimate the effectiveness of tier two and three social media outlets. This is particularly true for technology and business professionals who often prize functional and industry relevance above all else.
Twitter
While Facebook remains largely a personal network for its users, Twitter is more business-focused. Twitter offers
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Social Media
Know your customer and know their watering holes, when they go there, what they are looking for and why. Debbie Qaqish If your potential buyer spends time in a niche community, thats where you should be. Tune into more targeted, off-the-road communities like Focus, Quora, and Slashdot. Theres also an abundance of vertical communities such as GlobalSpec for engineering professionals. And then of course, there are communities that focus on specific functional roles such as MarketingProfs for marketers and SHRM for HR professionals. One final point - dont forget about the power of offline events. Its one area where B2B marketers have a distinct advantage over their consumer counterparts. Tradeshows, networking groups, and conferences provide unique ways for marketers to brush up on their industry knowledge and network both personally and as a brand representative.
Social Media Etiquette

While many pundits claim that there is no absolute wrong way to do social media, there are definitely tricks of the trade and special etiquette to observe on these networks. Here are some social media dos and donts.
Do form meaningful connections

The best way to find and increase your audience is by talking to them, not at them. Thank your customers for their participation. Acknowledge how its helped your business and improved your performance. Be specific and personal in your interaction. Almost all feedback is valuable to the enterprise. Honor that. Tom Barnes
DOs
DONTs
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Social Media
Do solve real problems for your customers
Your audience will value what you say if it is relevant, useful, and helps them in their day-to-day work. Youre there to make friends and build trust, so keep that in mind. The more value you create, by sharing relevant content, asking good questions, etc, the more people will flock to you. Susan Payton more opportunity and less disengagement. Save the pitch for the right time, rather than every other messa[ge, which may mean youll have to get away from those canned responses and really really chat it up. Len Shneyder
Dont over-plug your company, product, or self

Many marketers unseasoned in social media have a tendency to over-market and advertise their brands; social media requires a far more nuanced and human approach. People who are dogmatic, or solely out for self promotion are generally not impactful or effective. People who take themselves too seriously struggle. The quality of the contribution is generally more recognized than the quantity or volume. Dave Brock
Do dedicate the proper company resources

Social media is not a hobby project make sure your marketing organization has the staff and budget to effectively engage customers. Dont hobble your social managers ability and options to address issues give them responsibility and power to respond to the majority of customer issues and resolve them quicklywhich is the winning recipe to turn unhappy campers into brand champions. Steve Farnsworth
Dont forget about goals

Giving away an iPad to your Nth follower may boost your audience count, but how does it support your business objectives? Always make sure to define the goals for what youre doing and how social media will help. Many corporate social media efforts stumble out of the gate because they have no purpose, no voice, no intention. Its not a matter of knowing what youre doing, but WHY youre doing it. That why will give you focus and direction, and help you achieve better results with your intended audience(s) and relative to your broader business goals. Matt Heinz
Do listen first, talk later

By watching for mentions of your brand through social media monitoring technologies, you can gain valuable insight into your customers and products. Listen twice as much as you speak, and market half as much as you think you should. Its tempting to respond to everything with a pitch, but a modicum of restraint will yield
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Social Media
Technology Companies #Winning in Social Media

Dell
Dells social media efforts start with listening and monitoring. Their social media listening command center was custombuilt to read and respond to customers as quickly as possible. Dells dedicated Twitter handle for customer service, @ dellcares, operates just as any support hotline would. Dell also uses Facebook effectively with dedicated Pages for their Enterpise and Business market segments.
also created its own customer community, VMTN (VMware Technology Network). The company shows the love for its advocates by giving them moderation rights on VMTN and showcasing its vExperts across the web.
Rackspace
In 2009, Rackspace brought Robert Scoble, technology evangelist and author, on board. The company then pushed out Building 43, a community site focused on new startups and apps. Scoble frequently conducts video interviews of startup founders to post on YouTube, Google+, and Building 43s website. Though Scoble is only one of the many Rackers who participate in social media, hes brought star power and an authentic, insightful voice to the companys social efforts.
Social Media Monitoring

The social media monitoring market is nothing if not crowded. That can present a challenge for technology marketers looking for the right monitoring tool. But its also good news, especially if youre looking to try before you buy, or to simply hack together a solution using the wide range of free tools available. I suggest starting with the freely available tools: Google Reader - I use this as my central listening hub for blogs
VMware
VMwares social strategy is built on peer and expert communities. Their vExperts tweet and blog on a regular basis about virtualization and VMwares offerings. VMware
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Social Media
and alerts. Twitter Search Set up searches on your brand, keywords and important hashtags. Google Alerts - While they dont pick up everything from Twitter, they do get almost everything from the blogosphere. Set it us as a comprehensive search and send to Google Reader via RSS so it doesnt overwhelm your email inbox. Tweetdeck Set up columns based on search terms. Cotweet - If you have a team of tweeters on one account. You can set up searches in the system. Based on my testing, you need more than one source if you want to make sure you are not missing anything. Frank Days
How to Build an Audience for your Blog

Set up Feedburner or a similar service for readers to subscribe to blog updates Add social plug-ins so users can like, comment, and share your posts across multiple platforms Integrate your blog feed with Twitter so that you can tweet your recent posts Optimize your blog for keyword phrases that you can actually rank for Link to your blog from your LinkedIn profile, Twitter profile, and email signature Set up Google Analytics to monitor visitor traffic and demographics List your blog on an indexing site like Technorati.com Read, comment on, or reference other thought leaders blogs Ask your co-workers to spread word of your blog among their networks Share your blog posts through discussions on LinkedIn
When you are ready to make a financial investment, here are some of the leading tools to consider.
Alterian SM2 Buddy Media Crimson Hexagon Lithium Spiral16 Terametric Webtrends
Attensity Collective Intellect Jive Radian6 Sysomos Viralheat
Feel free to add your own suggestions to the list by clicking here: What are the best online tools to monitor your brand?
Invite your customers, partners, or thought leaders to guest blog for you
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Social Media
5 Social Media Books to Read

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations by Clay Shirky
Shirky is one of our greatest assets when it comes to understanding how information is created, shared, and consumed today. www.shirky.com
The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk

Vaynerchuk nails the topic of turning your customers into passionate brand advocates and ambassadors. www.thankyoueconomybook.com
The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg
Mashables Tamar Weinberg covers how to make a splash in the social media world, from specific online properties, to social etiquette. www.newcommunityrules.com
Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith

Effective marketing creates a sense of trust with the customer. In a refreshingly different ROIcentric approach, Brogan and Smith treat trust as a currency and transparency as a means to cash in. www.chrisbrogan.com
The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

Scotts guide contains a step-by-step action plan for engaging with prospects how to leverage your online presence to get noticed and establish relationships with customers. www.davidmeermanscott.com/books/the-newrules-of-marketing-and-pr/
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Content Marketing
Everyones a Publisher
Content marketing. Its all the rage. But theres a serious gap between what technology marketers think is strong content and what technology professionals believe is great content. The Content Marketing Institute claims that 60% of companies are looking to increase their content marketing spending in 2012, so closing the content gap becomes critically important. What content works for technologists? Heres what the IT pros on Focus.com had to say:
Stay grounded and realistic

Technologists have very little interest in companies whose marketing content is condescending or unprofessional. Dont speak down to me. Dont invent new terms. Avoid jargon. Steven Romero [If] marketing is effective, if it is interesting, provocative without being edgy or unprofessional, I will be inclined to take a look at the product. Andrew Baker
Use simple language

The business technology industry is already flooded with acronyms, jargon and complex terms. Using this type of language within your marketing collateral only frustrates the technologists as theyre spending more time trying to decipher the terms, as opposed to learning about your product. [Explain] it correctly and clearly without being dismissive... I am not impressed with made-up terms, overwhelming superlatives, and unproven claims. Joel Maloff
Be brief
Technology professionals dont have a lot of extra time on their hands, and the extra time they do have is better spent working on projects relevant to the business. [Be] concise and to the point. If I need further information, I will call or research. Dennis Morgan
Use specific examples and data

If content is king, then data is queen. Or at least a ladyin-waiting. For technologists looking to prove ROI to their C-Suite, solid numbers are a requirement.
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Content Marketing
[Where] marketing can provide value is by making whitepapers, case studies and generic ROI calculators readily available. If Im looking at two products that are very close in functionality and price, the ability to get the info I need to sell it internally or to better understand the technology at a high level. Technology marketing collateral that lacks details is pointless to me, and has the effect of me paying attention to products that do make their details and spec sheets and such easily available. Andrew Baker [Describe] your differentiators with defensible data [and speak] with FACTS, FACTS, FACTS. Steven Romero [Follow up with] details, examples, FAQs, and other resources that help to demonstrate real needs and issues crying out for solutions. Joel Maloff buyers journey, it is key that they market well and develop the relevant and timely content. Carlos Hidalgo In order to keep your firm out of the bad marketing bucket you need to know your audience. Research to determine what stage of the buying cycle youre creating content for and what problems your potential customers have. [Good] marketing is whatever proposes a solution for problems that I have, whether real or perceived. It engages and educates me. Bad marketing is whatever proposes a solution in search of a problem to solve. Glen Marshall
Know your audience

Research and map out how buyers make decisions in your target market. This includes understanding how a customer works through a considered purchase including the decisions they are trying to make and the information they will consume. Good marketing is engaging with the prospect about the things (i.e. content) that is important and vital to them and can better enable and educate them to make an informed decision. Bad marketing is that which is vendor focused all about product, feature and functionality. Understanding that marketing plays a key role in the development of content (in conjunction with sales) for every stage of the
Bonus tip: Have a good product!!!

For IT professionals, all the marketing in the world doesnt mean anything unless you have a strong product to back it up.
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Content Marketing
[Marketing] is not the primary way that I select technology products anyway. For me, marketing is nice for awareness, but not much else. A product either does what I need, at the price point I care about, or it doesnt. No amount of marketing will change that. Andrew Baker
Avoiding a well-defined process

Media companies spend a great deal of time thinking about how content creation, production, and publication can scale in a consistent way. Most marketing organizations do not. I think the biggest challenge for many folks is lack of a well-defined process. You can see this when a companys marketing efforts dont have any consistency in message or style. A solid process helps to ensure that when any content is created, there is an organized effort to get the most benefit possible. The biggest component is determining the best method of re-purposing content. This is often done poorly because of the ability to automatically syndicate your content across several platforms at once. Very little thought is given to determining if having identical entries in all the right places. Once, messaging is agreed upon, there has to be further decisions made as to where the resulting content piece is displayed - and what format it will take in each iteration. Heres one example: Does every blog post warrant being blasted out on Twitter, FB, LinkedIn as well as the many syndication sites? If so, should the actual verbiage in the blast about the blog post be the same on Twitter and on your FB page or your LinkedIn? If you decide that its not worth the time and effort to rewrite your tease and link to the blog, then youll have to follow the restrictions that apply to the toughest place. In this example, thats Twitter. The copy for the tease cant be more than 140 characters. Rick Schwartz
7 Content Marketing Mistakes

According to a recent study from the Content Marketing Institute, 9 out of 10 companies are employing content marketing strategies. On average, marketers spend over 25% of their budget on content marketing alone. With so much money at stake, marketers need to make sure theyre getting adequate return. Here are the top 7 content mistakes that are costing marketers money today:
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Content Marketing
Not following a content calendar
The first piece of content every technology marketer should create is the content calendar. One of the other shortfalls is not having a content calendar that everyone follows. For example: theres a technical paper being written about the new design of a certain product. This paper will be available for publication on or about the first of December. If your marketing folks also have some kind of product newsletter to clients, each month focusing on specific products, it may be that youll get much more impact from having Decembers newsletter focused on the same product being covered in the technical paper. Who does the blogging or the tweeting? Shouldnt they also be writing about the same product in December as well? Should there also be a push in the sales department to talk the product up? Rick Schwartz the research involved to really understand their prospects and part of it [is] because they dont have a process. But Id also add that before you can have a process, you must have a strategy to guide the process development. Ardath Albee Creating single monolithic pieces of content like white papers or single webinars and expecting them to carry a program. We find that you cant get heard above the noise unless you create multiple pieces of content around a specific topic or program to create buzz. The most successful programs multiple related pieces around a topic including long form content like white papers, blog posts and articles, press releases and pitch content for PR, online and live events on the subject, web pages built into the sites navigation, and video/rich media. Candyce Edelen
Emphasizing quantity over quality

Technology marketers face a never-ending challenge of having to satisfy one of the most educated audiences in the world the technology community. Its critical to place quality over quantity. Emphasizing quantity to the detriment of quality is a huge and very commonly made mistake. I am constantly hearing things like our executives are too busy to blog, but we have an intern/outsourcer who puts up 3-5 posts per week - with little attention to what those posts actually contain. Far too many company blogs contain garden-variety social media platitudes and/or unsophisticated product-feature pitches that have little to no differentiation or regard to
Failing to build a story

People love stories. Frame the content you create and your overall marketing message as a story or narrative that customers can relate to. Id add that most companies fail to use their content to build a story over time. Their content is mostly one-off pieces, not constructed to emphasize ideas and progress a prospects thinking about how they solve a problem. Part of this happens due to the fact that marketers know too much about their products, part of it because they dont do
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Content Marketing
why a customer should CARE. The companies that are, in the long term, most effective with content marketing will be those who deliver the most powerful core messages to market. I.e. it is a key strategic initiative with top managements attention - not a production line handed off to low-paid employees, contractors and interns. Chris Selland For me, what should come first (and so often doesnt) is a real and abiding interest in peoples problems - call them challenges, if you will. A content marketer who starts his or her day asking how can I get enough webinars, blog posts and white papers out there will make all of the mistakes I see listed here. A content marketer who starts his or her day asking how can I help people - my customers - solve their greatest nagging problems, and how can information help them do it. Ryan Skinner The topics of the content are too generalized. This leads to people glancing at content but not really being engaged because it doesnt speak to a specific enough pain. This is done out of fear of being too niched down and losing potential readers/prospects, even though it does the exact opposite. Erik Luhrs
Creating content that is too dense

How you present content is just as important as the content itself. Where density is required, use list formats. Psychological study after psychological study shows that the human brain loves lists. Another mistake is trying to do too much with one content asset. Prospects are busy. Theyve told surveys they want shorter, more valuable information. They can only ingest and identify with so many ideas at once. I recommend that marketers think very carefully about the takeaways that they want prospects to get each time they engage. Which goes back to the idea of building a story over time - not going for the whole enchilada at once. And that goes back to strategy, process and appropriate goals and expectations. Ardath Albee
Creating content that is too general

Buyers cite contextual relevance first when it comes to identifying what makes content valuable. Focus on vertical industry messaging and requirements and try to be as specific as possible. I find the number 1 issue stems from lack of clarity when it comes to the target audience. Who are your writing FOR? A compelling message starts with a clear understanding of the target, their problems and potential solutions. A lot of content out there is simply not targeted -- its too general, states the obvious and fails to provide enough value to get the target to take action. Joan Nowak
Forgetting a Call to Action (CTA)

Youre an IT vendor, not a public library. Remember to insert strong calls to action in the right places.
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Content Marketing
Forgetting that the purpose of marketing content is not only to inform, but one would hope provoke a positive response, and therefore failing to include a call to action or at least a suggestion that the reader/viewer/listener take the next step. Michael Brown A lot of content is beginning to be like marketing material: It makes noise but then doesnt tell you how to follow the music. Ultimately, before anyone creates content and distributes it they should think about what outcome they want from their activities and offer a helpful CTA to readers to help the reader and thereby help themselves. Erik Luhrs as being similar to sharpening your knives the better job you do here, the better results youll have later. Once you have your audience in mind, start developing the flavor of your piece the subject and delivery method. Content that strikes some sort of an emotional chord with people has the best chances of going viral, so shoot for something thats outrageous, controversial or hilarious. (Hint: Content pieces involving cats, unicorns or narwhals tend to take off.) At the same time start working on the delivery. How you present your information plays a huge part in whether or not something goes viral, so is it going to be a video? An infographic? A photo? A blog post? The content and delivery method work hand-in-hand to create a deliciously juicy piece. While the subject and delivery method marinate together, fire up your promotion strategies. Nail down your email and social media campaigns, and look into the best ways to leverage content curation tools like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Paper.li, and Pinterest. You want a strategy thats white-hot. As you start to throw your content on the proverbial promotion grill, definitely sprinkle in a touch of luck for good measure. One of the biggest factors for whether or not a piece of content goes viral is simply being at the right place, at the right time, with the right topic, presented to the right people. If the prep work and timing are right, youll have a hot piece of viral content thats ready to consume. Read more: What makes content go viral?
A Recipe for Viral Content

Ingredients 1 part audience research 1 part subject development 1 part format consideration A hot promotion strategy A dash of luck Method Begin prepping your content piece by thinking about your audience. Viral content soundly resonates with an audience, so think about who youre creating the content for and why. What purpose are you trying to achieve with this content? What question or problem are you trying to solve? Think of this step
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Demand Generation
From Zero to Hero the Hard Way
Demand generation is the lifeblood of technology marketing. Creating demand in the form of pipeline opportunity and revenue remains the only surefire way for marketing organizations to demonstrate value. Even so, many technology marketers are under pressure when it comes to even basic demand generation tactics. In fact, 76% of CMOs list demand generation as their top challenge. Why is that? When it comes to creating demand, marketing must bridge the gap between two constituent groups who are often at odds with each other. The first group consists of prospective customers - they are interested in making the right decision for their businesses. The second group consists of salespeople - they are interested in closing business. Marketing finds itself in the unenviable position of connecting these two groups in a way that is productive for both. Thats hard, but not impossible. Here are some tips for creating demand that can in fact bridge the gap between prospects and customers.
Do:
Do define process and set goals
Too many marketers dive right into lead generation tactics without spending a sufficient amount of time on strategic considerations. Process is vital as once you generate the lead i.e. spend marketing dollars, you must ensure they are managed appropriately or else they will leak out of the funnel. Sirius Decisions reports that only 1-2% of marketing generated leads ever make it through to sales close. To further this point, MarketingSherpa research shows that 52% of marketers have listed lead to sales conversion as their top challenge. This highlights a lack of process. So if you have solid, relevant content without the process to manage and convert, you are most likely losing revenue. Carlos Hidalgo
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Demand Generation
Do define your buyer
Everything gets easier with demand generation if you build campaigns with an understanding of how buyers make purchasing decisions. The first step is to clearly and articulately define your buyer(s). The creation of multiple personas to support this definition is critical. The personas need to incorporate your gatekeepers, influencers, decision makers and executives so that you and your team can quickly evaluation the key value propositions for each constituent. Chris Rechtsteiner
Dont:
Dont talk about your products
Too many vendors focus on things that most buyers just dont care about. If you dont stop talking about features and move to a higher degree of embraceable relevance, your communications are just more meaningless noise. Ardath Albee Stop making everything all about you. Put your marketing super ego aside and start making your marketing all about your customers. Putting your audience first in everything you do is probably the most important resolution marketers can make. But this can only happen when we lay aside our human tendency to self-preserve. Michael Brenner
Do create engaging, relevant, and dynamic content

Content is king, particularly if you understand how to create and distribute remarkable content that is contextually relevant to what decision the prospect is trying to make. Once you know your buyer and how they buy, you can begin putting together the building blocks of content. Relevant and content is what will keep a buyer(s) engaged through the sales process at every stage. Knowing what content to deliver at what time in the buying process is key. Carlos Hidalgo
Dont think you dont need to show your contributions to revenue

Its easier said than done, but marketing needs to show how demand generation campaigns drive revenue. Start with pipeline opportunity created and move down the funnel from there. Marketing is an equal partner in driving revenue with sales [at Ariba]. When we look at what we measure throughout the year, 50% of the revenue number is on our head Youre no longer really viewed as a cost center,
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Demand Generation
youre viewed as a key player in driving the growth of the company. Rachel Spasser Marketing goals must be tied to revenue. This should be based on the % of the sales pipeline that is driven directly by marketing vs. generated by sales or partners. Henry Bruce [M]arketers should be measured on revenue and this also requires a mind-shift for marketers on being revenue driven. This is not to say that marketers should not have other measurements, but the goal should be about revenue and this highlights the importance of defining the lead planning process which is only successful if done collaboratively with marketing and sales. Carlos Hidalgo Report, 39% of marketers cited email marketing as their top performing marketing channel, higher than any other channel. Email marketing software also saw the third highest investment rate among marketing departments in 2011. Email marketing tactics are not only becoming smarter at adhering to stricter spam laws, but theyre also becoming more mobile and socially integrated. Read on to hear more important email marketing trends that all technology marketers should be aware of:
Mobile integration
Whether [through] smart phones like the iPhone or Android devices or tablets, consumers are increasingly reading and interacting with their emails on mobile devices. Email marketers must re-design their emails for touch, to be more scannable, simpler easy to read on small screens. Loren McDonald With more than half of all mobile phones in North America being smartphones, and these smartphone users spending 40% of their time on the phone dealing with email, it is imperative your email designs will render properly on different devices such as smartphones and tablets. Its no longer about creating a mobile version; its about creating a single version that all recipients can access and read independent of their device. Stefan Eyram
The Email Marketing Workhorse

Email is still one of the most effective ways for marketers to reach their target audience. According to Focus.coms 2011 Marketers Benchmark
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Demand Generation
Social
Think of social media and email marketing as one hand washes the other. In other words, each of them should promote the other. One of the coolest tools I came across is WiseStamp that allows you to include a social email signature including latest tweets, Facebook status and so forth. Aaron Eden It needs to be said that email and social work hand-inhand and need to be integrated. Email content should be easily shared via social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn while social should be used to build your email subscriber lists. Not every email needs to be shared and not every call to action on a social network needs to ask for email sign-up. However, making these two, related channels work together will be best for marketer and consumer, alike. Stefan Eyram Email was the first social channel. When two people interact, its social and we need to stop making false delineations between channels and simply be as intuitive as our customers are when it comes to using and moving between such channels. Jim Ducharme employees, customers, testimonials, reviews, humor, usergenerated content and content from social media and community sources. Loren McDonald Its interesting that Loren raises the point of humanizing the message since I think this falls in line with another powerful trend: word-of-mouth. Its already flexed its muscle this past year in marketing, social and political change. I dont see this diminishing at all, but growing steadily in power. Jim Ducharme
Automation
While the branding, awareness and luck of timing aspect of broadcast email will continue to work, smart email marketers are increasingly combining behavior and automation to drive up response rates and ROI. From automated onboarding series to cart abandonment series to post-purchase programs, these trigger-based email programs are producing a growing percentage of email revenue. For many companies these programs deliver 25-40% of total email revenue, but look for that to grow to more than 50% for many companies. Loren McDonald For many email marketers the only automation they have are data imports and welcome emails. To increase relevance and timeliness, and to make sure a lack of resources doesnt prevent your emails from going out, automating as much as possible is the trend. This includes welcome email streams, re-engagement campaigns, abandoned-cart emails, and many more. It also includes the import and export of data,
Humanize your content

Smart marketers will increasingly incorporate value-add and helpful content into their email stream beyond the relentless buy this approach. Additionally, messages will speak with more of a human voice, incorporating
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Demand Generation
segmentation done in the background and reports being created. This allows email marketers to focus on the more important analysis of campaigns and data plus the overall strategy for the email programs. Stefan Eyram Churn is one of the biggest business challenges. Retaining your current customers has rightfully become a priority. One third of your email list will become inactive during the course of the year. Reactivation campaigns are worth their while, but have limited impact. In 2012 the smart marketer aims at preventing inactivity in the early stages of the relationship both to battle customer churn and to get a preferred inbox position. Above the mediocre emails (both literally and figuratively) customer loyalty is moving from keeping the backdoor shut, to keeping customers active at the frontline. This involves well-executed welcome campaigns, interesting, stimulating messages and event driven emails. Jordie van Rijn Up to half - or more - of your email database can be considered inactive. That means they do not open or click your messages and do not engage with your email content and offers. Identify these people at least every 2-3 months and send them one or more special, targeted emails and offers to drive engagement. If you cant re-activate these people remove them from your regular sends as they are unlikely to respond and will only water down your results. Stefan Eyram
Emailed receipts
Receiving transactional messages via email bill is very convenient for the consumer; he will be able to find back those lost documents in his inbox. But there is great benefit for the marketer, who can add offers to these documents. And dont underestimate the value of connecting offline buyers and building online communication with them. The marketing department will be getting a bit more of a grip on these emails, as they are often historically run by other departments. Jordie van Rijn
Inactivity & re-engagement

Dealing with Inactives: Inactive (however defined) subscribers typically comprise 40-50% of a companys email database. And after-the-fact reactivation emails typically only reactivate 1-2% of those inactives. In 2012, a growing number of email marketers will wake up to this reality and focus much of their efforts on minimizing inactives and activating subscribers early in their relationship or as they show signs of going completely inactive. Marketers will use automation to drive these programs in a real-time manner, rather than after-the-fact manual campaigns. Loren McDonald
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Demand Generation
An Update on Marketing Automation and Lead Nurturing
Marketing automation and lead nurturing remain hot topics in technology marketing. Despite all of the attention the segment receives, its estimated that marketing automation adoption sits at around 10% of all B2B marketing organizations right now. Here are three tactics that early adopters of lead nurturing have successfully utilized:
Give prospects time to engage

81% of people buy on or after the fifth contact. But only 10% of businesses continue to make contact five times and beyond. So you could say that companies are potentially losing 81% of business that will close. And that is a follow-up problem and issue. Kim Albee
Align nurturing with sales

[I]nvolve sales in the planning and implementation as they will have great insights into your customers behavior and buying process. Carlos Hidalgo [Speak] with sales to find out what tools they find most effective in one-to-one sales cycles...and then see if you can emulate those conversations or use those pieces in a one-to-many capacity. Getting that buy-in from sales also can eliminate any friction due to who owns the initial lead communication cycle. Elizabeth Sklaroff
Create and distribute content to specific buyer personas

Once you know your buyer and how they buy, you can begin putting together the building blocks of content. Relevant and content is what will keep a buyer(s) engaged through the sales process at every stage. Knowing what content to deliver at what time in the buying process is key. Carlos Hidalgo The whole point of creating nurturing content mapped to the buyers stage in the process is to help marketers identify when they may be receptive to conversations based on the type of information theyre showing interest in viewing. With this knowledge, we can also increase the relevance of the dialogues we have with our prospects. Ardath Albee
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Sales and Marketing Alignment

Half Full, Half Empty, or Just Empty?
Marketers have a unique challenge in that their efforts are judged by the effectiveness of the sales team. Often, the value placed on their efforts is out of their control and in the hands of sales, creating inevitable tension between the two sides. [One day we] will be dropping the titles of sales or marketing because the teams are one, as they should have been from the beginning. Christine Crandell In most cases, however, this alignment is far from reality. Achieving alignment between sales and marketing is not easy, and trying to radically change corporate culture cannot be done overnight. It is more realistic to work to continue to close the gap between sales and marketing and celebrate the small victories. With that in mind, weve provided a quick primer to understand some of the inherent differences between sales and marketing. We then delve into some tips to increase cross-organizational collaboration.
Complimentary functions
Sales and marketing occupy different but complementary parts within a company. Despite what some sales or marketing employees would tell you, each organization should rely on the other. I like to fall back on a simple one-liner that a wise marketing man once shared with me, and has since been repeated by many. The one-liner is in answer to the question: what is the purpose of marketing? The answer is: To help sales people to sell. It really is as simple as that. The bottom line is, a company has to sell. Sales people are on the front line. A marketing department needs to be acting in support, by establishing product awareness, generating demand, and supporting customer loyalty. Michael Fox However, this is only one side of the coin. Sales also supports marketing by giving them valuable insight into the customer base and their buying habits.
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Two sides of the fence
Alignment between sales and marketing can be difficult due to misconceptions and generalizations about what the other does. Marketing does not see the tremendous amount of time and effort required to qualify a lead and how many do not make the grade. Gary Hart Marketing needs to position alignment around sales terms like opportunities, pipeline, revenue and quotas. Starting with terms like marketing qualified leads may not resonate with sales. Chad Horenfeldt
Have weekly/bi-weekly optimization sales and marketing meetings

Its almost unfortunate that having meetings is on this list. The key is to understand what to talk about; there are two things sales cares about: leads and sales enablement tools (i.e. content). Talk about those two things and not necessarily in the same meeting. You have to have a meeting where you discuss the leads being passed to sales. The result should not be a screaming match, but rather an agreement between sales and marketing on shared goals.
On the other hand:

The sales teams feel like they can do it without the marketing collateral or input from those geeks across the hall (or in the other building), and marketers are loathe to leave their conference rooms to enter the field. Brad Moore It all comes down to egos; by maintaining prejudices about each others departments, sales and marketing set themselves back on the alignment goal.
Define qualified leads

There is a lot of very interesting data on sales versus marketing definitions. However, there is one definition that truly matters most to your relationship with sales: the definition of a qualified lead. If you do one thing to try to bring sales and marketing together, this should be it.
Tips for Sales-Marketing Synergy

Think like a salesperson
Salespeople think in terms of revenue, and marketers think in terms of ROI. When interfacing with sales, try to reorient your mindset and talk like a salesperson to maximize communication.
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Be transparent
Its not about who gets the most leads, customers, or revenue. Its about the company, the product, and working together to give your customers the best experience possible. So when you talk to sales, be clear and collaborative. Sales as a department is unaccustomed to thinking in terms of alignment, so heres where marketing has a lead (no pun intended) on them. As a department, marketing should publish a list of the specific activities it will engage in to support sales, including but not limited to: generating a specific number of sales accepted leads per month, establishing a brand and presence in the market that educates the prospect about the company prior to the first sales call, and providing sales with the content it needs to continue to educate and qualify the customer during the sales cycle. By being upfront about accountability and workflow, marketing can further enable alignment. process that incorporates sales and marketing having shared goals, then alignment can happen. Leadership is the key to success.
Structure alignment around the customer

Despite the internal focus of the sales-marketing alignment question, its also imperative to look outside your organization, and even outside the company, to your bread and butter: the customer. We all need based on a clear definition of both responsibilities - a better alignment of marketing and sales toward common goals and common scorecards designed backwards from the customer as design point number one. Tamara Schenk Once companies stop thinking about internal processes and politics, and start refocusing on the customer, change is more likely to occur.
Get leadership buy-in

While the CMO Council reports that 38% of CMOs cite aligning sales and marketing as a top priority this year, only 30% have a plan for how to make this change happen. Have one leader whose job it is to align both organizations and create a revenue organization. This position can be the CEO or in some places, the newly minted CRO (Chief Revenue Officer). If the CEO is willing to create a streamlined revenue
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Research and Planning

The Lean, Mean Research Machine
Planning and research have taken a backseat in many marketing organizations. For many technology marketers research has really been about analyst relations, perfunctory data collection, and sourcing pithy sound bites from third party experts. Research has usually not about identifying actionable insights and intelligence. However, marketers should be able to use market research to make better strategic and tactical decisions, particularly in an environment, like technology, where theres an over-abundance of information.
A Renaissance in Planning and Research?

Here are 5 emerging trends that are transforming the research industry.
Lean research
Lean development is all the rage in the startup world and this new way of thinking has implications for marketers at even the largest technology companies. What does lean mean for market research? First, it means that marketing organizations should engage customers directly, as opposed to through third party research companies. Second, marketers should place a premium on a small number of high quality conversations, as opposed to a large number of cursory surveys. Third, it means that marketers should be continuously collecting insights and intelligence. As Carlos Diaz Ruiz says, When do you need feedback? All the time. What changes is the medium to obtaining this feedback and the resources available, and there is not a standard recipe for that.
DIY research
The aforementioned lean principles are also driving new forms of do it yourself (DIY) research. The Internet has made DIY
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research possible by exposing massive pools of respondents to technology marketers via tools like Data.com (formerly Jigsaw) and free survey tools like SurveyMonkey and Wufoo. Now, over 90% of research can be conducted in house and for free. As a result more and more technology marketers are bringing traditional, survey-based research in-house. The DIY trend makes sense. Its often more cost effective and timely, but marketers must be careful to ensure that the quality of data and analysis isnt deprecated. products, marketing collateral, or experiences? There are a number of innovative collaboration tools, like online research communities, that allow marketers to do exactly that.
Data as a commodity
Theres more information available to us today than at any point in history and the market research industry is no exception to this. Theres an enormous amount of market research data (as well as laconic analyst quotes) available online. Some simple queries on Google that combine the names of IT analyst firms with document extensions such as PDF and PPT expose this data in real time to marketers. There are even firms such as the Altimeter Group that make it a point to make their primary research and data available for free.
Quality over quantity

Whats more important to your business: one truly exceptional insight or statistically significant datasets? Many marketers who simply want to look good in front of CEOs and boards will pick the latter, but marketers who want to lead the business will pick the former. Fortunately, there is one simple way to collect exceptional insights and that is to have substantive, in depth conversations with your smartest customers. Dont use surveys, dont worry about data, and dont create a presentation that summarizes your findings. Simply have a deep, meaningful conversation with the people who can make or break your business.
From learning to collaboration

Most technology marketers use research to observe and learn about markets. Very few use it as a vehicle to actually collaborate with end users in the name of co-creating products and customer experiences. Want to create really great
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6 Resources for Market Researchers

Forrester Market Insights
Its skewed towards consumer research, but is rich in data and cutting edge research techniques. blogs.forrester.com/market_insights
GreenBook
An exceptional resource for vendor-side buyers of research products and services. www.greenbook.org
Tom Andersons NexGen Market Research

Tom is extremely well connected in the market research industry and makes whats often a staid subject engaging and provocative. www.tomhcanderson.com
#MRX and #ARchat on Twitter

Two great hashtags that all market researchers should follow on Twitter. twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23MRX twitter.com/#!/search?q=%23ARchat
Research Magazine
The team at Research Magazine continues to crank out highquality media on all things market research. www.research-live.com
Pew Research Center

The Pew Research Center is a great resource for gathering big picture type data and insights. pewresearch.org
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Marketing Technology
Too Many Buyers, Not Enough Users
It was only a couple of years ago that many technology industry experts were referring to the marketing department as the final frontier. Back then very few marketing teams were sophisticated, large-scale buyers of technology. How things have changed in just a few short years. A number of factors have contributed to this change. The development of a variety of technologies primarily designed to help marketers target and engage consumers online has created an entirely new market. As marketing spend has moved online, marketing has become more measurable and easier to track. Also, cloud computing and SaaS delivery models have made technology available to marketing teams without a lot of IT resources at their disposal. Finally, many technology marketers have realized that technology can be a force multiplier for organizations that have historically been resource constrained. While technology marketers have become buyers of technology, its not clear whether theyve become actual users or not. Here are four questions every marketer should ask before signing that license:
How does this technology integrate with your existing services?

Technologies should not exist in a bubble. So before buying a new service, think about how it fits into the ecosystem of your marketing infrastructure. The most important factor of all isnt necessarily that marketers have these tools at their disposal, but use them in an integrated fashionIn other words, true Best-inClass marketers use their tools in a way where the parts fit together tightly, and where the organization operates as a well-oiled machine, and is continually learning and improving. Chris Selland
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Are these technologies usable and relevant?
New, shiny software is great; however people and process come before technology. Just having the right technologies does not make you best-in-class. What gets an organization to that level is how they are used to help drive revenue. Carlos Hidalgo The best assets your company has are its employees, so make sure you dont forget that when evaluating new products.
Does this technology fit within the structure of your company?

Different marketing tools exist for different marketing companies, and what technologies may work well for certain organizations might not be ideal for others. For B2C industries, the channels are generally different, transaction sizes smaller and the sales cycles much shorter, so traditional email and social marketing (for instance, Facebook campaign tools) are more common and effective, and the analytics tend to be more big-data focused - less tied to traditional CRM. Chris Selland
Is there a valid business reason for why you need this new technology?
Sure you need it but do you really see people in your company taking advantage of this product in the coming months or years? Lets not overlook that the best new technology might actually be using one you have. It is painful to watch the wasted spend above the funnel, and the wasted opportunities that simply get lost in the funnel of many if not most companies. Comparing your companys metrics to those of average and best-in-class companies will go a long way toward improving ROI on investments made in existing technology. Dan McDade
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The Expanding Universe of Technology Tools

Technology tools are expanding at a rapid pace. Heres a list of examples of different tools that marketers can use to increase their effectiveness.
Marketing Automation:
Eloqua, Marketo
Paid Search Management:

Efficient Frontier, Marin Software
Search Engine Optimization:

TopRank, SEOmoz
Ad Networks:
Bizo, Retargeter
Social Media Monitoring:

Google Alerts, Radian6
Creative Tools:
Adobe Creative Suite
Website Analytics:
Adobe Omniture, Google Analytics
CRM:
Microsoft Dynamics, Oracle, Salesforce.com, SugarCRM
Email Marketing:
ExactTarget, Responsys, Silverpop
Event Platforms:
Citrix, InXpo, On24, WebEx
This list is by no means exhaustive or inclusive, so feel free to add your own suggestions here: What are the technologies that best-in-class marketers absolutely have to have at their disposal?
Integrated Suites:
Adobe, Hubspot
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Marketing Automation Tips and Tricks

For technology marketers, marketing automation presents a particularly interesting challenge. Everybodys buying marketing automation, but many companies fail to derive any true value. Its important that marketers understand that marketing automation is not a plug-and-play technology, but it requires time and a continuous effort to get desired results. Below is some advice from our experts on the top six steps to ensure you get the best ROI from your marketing automation software.
Name a project manager

[T]he most important step to ensure the best overall return on MA is putting the right people in place whether on staff or on retainer. (Yes, I think this is a place where consultants can be worth their weight in gold.) Prugh Roeser In addition to the development of process, organizations should ensure they have the right people resources in place. In a 2010 Frost & Sullivan/Bulldog study over 40% of automation owners stated that not having the right people was an obstacle to getting the full value from their automation technology. Carlos Hidalgo Make sure you name a project manager from the vendor, as well as one from your own IT organization. These two PMs will work together using the same rules of engagement you and the provider will use in full implementation. Marketing and Sales should name two business sponsors, who will act as point people for providing business information and lead scoring rules. They will also help monitor pilot participants. Richard Fouts
Set goals and metrics

It is important to define key metrics that are going to define the ROI. Its important to make sure that metrics are defined considering all the stakeholders from marketing manager, VP of marketing, CFO as CEO (and anyone else involved). Each of these stakeholders are doing to perceive ROI differently and hence its important get everyone on the same page. The next step to define goals that you intend to achieve with marketing automation. These are completely dependent on your specific business and must be defined to specifically help with the sales & marketing organizations overall goals. They should also be quantifiable, agreed up on by all stake holders and should not be too high level of vague. And they must align with the metrics set up earlier. Vaibhav Domkundwar
Get buy-in from management

My team has learned to work with the CFO or financial team early and often to get their backing and assistance with reliable reports, particularly involving cost (cost-perlead, cost-per-sales-opportunity, cost-per-closed-deal) and revenue. Having the CFO backing - or even reporting - your marketing numbers boosts cred enormously. Thor Johnson
41
Most of the CEOs I know avoid the gadgetry of business. They know technology is important, but they view it in the context of achieving their business objectives and enhancing operations and profits. Thats what the technology crowd still struggles with. And thats why CEOs active endorsement, enforcement, and reinforcement are crucial to establish and sustain the focus on the business purpose, processes, and customers the technology is there to serve. Michael A. Brown You need to be able to know which messages are resonating and which are failing. Armed with this data, you can make smart decisions that increase ROI. Tyler Garns Report a few KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, perhaps 3 or 4 key measures that show other executives whats important. With many of my clients, I initially see pages and pages of KPIs to track, which means that nothing is being tracked effectively. Settle on a few good metrics: like sales leads generated, sales acceptance rate, percent of closed deals sourced by marketing, marketing cost per closed deal. Keep it high level and businessrelevant, and others will pay attention. Thor Johnson
Align with sales

Align with sales immediately. An easy way to do this is to forget doing broad based campaigns to start and focus on working with sales and providing campaigns that help them achieve quota. The faster you get sales on board, the faster you will get to ROI. An often overlooked component to ROI is what will sales do with the leads when they get passed over? Debbie Qaqish
Define the lead management process

One of the key steps an organization can take to ensure the best ROI from their marketing automation investment is the development and implementation of a Lead Management Framework(SM). In a comparison of the two, the organizations that adopted marketing automation and developed the proper process we see the following increases over those organizations that had weak or no processes: a 366% increase in sales accepted leads; a 416% increase in closed deals; a $570,000 in more revenue. This is a significant increase and clearly shows the benefit of defining process. Carlos Hidalgo
Track ROI and report on KPIs

Another key piece to ensure is that you can track ROI by lead source. Most marketing automation solutions will allow you to track ROI overall, but if you cant drill down and know whats going on by lead source, then the information isnt very actionable. With ROI by lead source, you can make smart decisions about where to spend your marketing budget. Similar to tracking by lead source, if you cant track by campaign, the conglomerate ROI data is not actionable.
42
One Final Thing

If you want to keep going, you can. Theres a lot of great stuff out there, including these 5 books that every marketer must read in 2012.
Brandwashed
by Martin Lindstrom
An expos of the tricks companies use to get us to buy their products and services. www.martinlindstrom.com/brandwashed
Thinking, Fast and Slow

by Daniel Kahneman
An anti-Gladwell perspective on how we make decisions. www.amazon.com/dp/0374275637/ref=as_li_ss_til
The Internet is a Playground

by David Thorne
A laugh out loud compendium of Thornes viral Internet content. 27bslash6.com/tiiap.html
Adapt
by Tim Harford
Why trial and error is critical to progress in a complex world. timharford.com/books/adapt
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

by Edward Tufte
Before there were cheap infographics, there was Tufte. www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi
43
Contributors
Ardath Albee
CEO and B2B Marketing Strategist, Marketing Interactions Inc.
www.focus.com/profiles/ardath-albee/public//
Dave Brock
President and CEO, Partners In EXCELLENCE

www.focus.com/profiles/dave-brock/public/
Kim Albee
President & Founder, Genoo, LLC

www.focus.com/profiles/kim-albee/public/
Michael A. Brown
President, BtoBEngage
www.focus.com/profiles/michael-a-brown/public/
Andrew Baker
Director, Service Operations, SWN Communications Inc.

www.focus.com/profiles/andrew-baker/public/
Henry Bruce
President, Rock Annand Group

www.focus.com/profiles/henry-bruce/public/
Tom Barnes
Founder, Mediathink
www.focus.com/profiles/tom-barnes-1/public/
Randy Brunson
President, Centurion Advisory Group
www.focus.com/profiles/randy-brunson-1/public/
Michael Brenner
Sr. Director, Global Integrated Marketing, SAP

www.focus.com/profiles/michael-brenner/public/
Christine Crandell
Serial CMO, author, speaker and blogger, NBS

www.focus.com/profiles/christine-crandell/public/
44
Contributors
Frank Days
Director, New and Social Media, Novell
www.focus.com/profiles/frank-days/public/
Stefan Eyram
Business Development at Jam Direct Inc. and ClickMail Marketing

www.focus.com/profiles/stefan-eyram/public/
Carlos Diaz Ruiz
Researcher, Hanken School of Economics

www.focus.com/profiles/carlos-diaz-ruiz/public/
Steve Farnsworth
Chief Digital Strategist, Jolt Social Media

www.focus.com/profiles/steve-farnsworth/public/
Vaibhav Domkundwar
Founder & CEO, Nurture
www.focus.com/profiles/vaibhav-domkundwar/public/
Richard Fouts
Research Director, Gartner

www.focus.com/profiles/richard-fouts/public/
Jim Ducharme
Community Manager, GetResponse

www.focus.com/profiles/jim-ducharme-1/public/
Michael Fox
CEO, Tribal Knowledge TV

www.focus.com/profiles/michael-fox-2/public/
Candyce Edelen
CEO, PropelGrowth
www.focus.com/profiles/candyce-edelen/public/
Tyler Garns
Director of Marketing, Infusionsoft

www.focus.com/profiles/tyler-garns-1/public/
Aaron Eden
Founder/Developer/Social Media, Garious

www.focus.com/profiles/aaron-eden/public/
Gary Hart
President, Sales Du Jour

www.focus.com/profiles/gary-hart/public/
45
Contributors
Matt Heinz
President, Heinz Marketing Inc
www.focus.com/profiles/matt-heinz/public/
Erik Luhrs
Creator / Founder, The GURUS Selling System

www.focus.com/profiles/erik-luhrs/public/
Carlos Hidalgo
CEO, The Annuitas Group

www.focus.com/profiles/carlos-hidalgo/public/
Joel Maloff
Principal Consultant, Maloff NetResults

www.focus.com/profiles/joel-maloff/public/
Carmen Hill
Glen Marshall
Social Media & Content Strategist, Babcock & Jenkins

www.focus.com/profiles/carmen-hill-1/public/
Principal, Grok-A-Lot, LLC

www.focus.com/profiles/glen-marshall/public/
Chad Horenfeldt
Dan McDade
Director, Customer Success, Eloqua

www.focus.com/profiles/chad-horenfeldt/public/
President, PointClear, LLC

www.focus.com/profiles/dan-mcdade/public/
Thor Johnson
Loren McDonald
CMO & CEO, Team Thor Marketing

www.focus.com/profiles/thor-johnson/public/
VP, Industry Relations, Silverpop

www.focus.com/profiles/loren-mcdonald/public/
Peter Johnston
Brad Moore
Director (CEO), Intelligent Prospecting

www.focus.com/profiles/peter-johnston/public/
VP, 317Consulting Services

www.focus.com/profiles/brad-moore-1/public/
46
Contributors
Dennis Morgan
CEO/Consultant, DK Morgan Group
www.focus.com/profiles/dennis-morgan-2/public/
Steven Romero
IT Governance Evangelist, Romero Consulting & BOT International

www.focus.com/profiles/steven-romero/public/
Joan Nowak
Small Business Coach, Hybrid Business Advisors

www.focus.com/profiles/joan-nowak/public/
Tamara Schenk
VP Sales Enablement, T-Systems International GmbH

www.focus.com/profiles/tamara-schenk/public/
Susan Payton
President, Egg Marketing & Communications

www.focus.com/profiles/susan-payton/public/
Len Shneyder
Sr. Product Marketing Mgr, IBM

www.focus.com/profiles/len-shneyder/public/
Debbie Qaqish
Chief Revenue Officer, The Pedowitz Group

www.focus.com/profiles/debbie-qaqish/public/
Rick Schwartz
Owner, Sales Addiction

www.focus.com/profiles/rick-schwartz/public/
Chris Rechtsteiner
Co-Founder, Page Foundry, Inc.

www.focus.com/profiles/chris-rechtsteiner/public/
Chris Selland
Chief Marketing Officer, Terametric

www.focus.com/profiles/chris-selland/public/
Prugh Roeser
President, The Devereux Group, Inc.

www.focus.com/profiles/prugh-roeser/public/
Elizabeth Sklaroff
Founder, Round Social Marketing

www.focus.com/profiles/elizabeth-sklaroff/public/
47
Contributors
Ryan Skinner
Account Director, Velocity Partners
www.focus.com/profiles/ryan-skinner/public/
Rachel Spasser
Vice President, Marketing, Ariba

www.focus.com/profiles/rachel-spasser/public/
Matthew Trifiro
SVP Marketing, Assistly

www.focus.com/profiles/matthew-trifiro/public/
Jordie van Rijn
emailmarketing consultant, eMailmonday

www.focus.com/profiles/jordie-van-rijn/public/
48

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The Technology Marketers Handbook, 2012 Edition

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

How we created the handbook

The owners manual

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

10 Key Findings and Predictions

The return of strategic marketing

Here come the startup marketers

Customer powered marketing

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

10 Key Findings and Predictions

Leads become a commodity

Sales and marketing misalignment

Return of 1:1 marketing

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

10 Key Findings and Predictions

Other trends to watch

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

10 Marketers to Watch in 2012

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz

Andy Berndt, Google

Jon Iwata, IBM

Joe Chernov, Eloqua

Sean Ellis startup marketing guru

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

10 Marketers to Watch in 2012

Mike Volpe, Hubspot

Jon Miller, Marketo

Alexis Ohanian, the internets Leonardo DaVinci

Mary Ann Reilly, American Express

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

Positioning and Branding

Positioning and Branding Best Practices

Effective positioning is simple positioning

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

Positioning and Branding

Instill the brand in the entire customer experience

The brand promise easy to make, tough to deliver

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

Positioning and Branding

Unleash your army of brand ambassadors

Let the brand create demand

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

Positioning and Branding

6 Remarkable Technology Marketing Campaigns

Google Chrome Fastball

IBM Watson Jeopardy

Xerox Real Business

Dropbox Free Space

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

Positioning and Branding

5 Agencies Built for Technology Marketing

Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

The Social Media Landscape

The Best of the Rest

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

Social Media Etiquette

Do form meaningful connections

2012 Focus.com - The Technology Marketers Handbook

Dont over-plug your company, product, or self

Do dedicate the proper company resources

Dont forget about goals